Mission Critical Fire Protection

Localized Fire Suppression Case Study CNC Machine

During the 2015 Seminar Series titled Trending Now! #FireProtection: Technologies Impacting the Future, Lee Kaiser spoke about trending technology in clean agent fire suppression. In the video excerpt below, you can watch as he shows a case study for localized fire suppression systems in CNC machines. If you would like to register for the 2016 Seminar click here.

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Transcript

One of the places that we use these small, clean agent systems are on CNC machines in the manufacturing arena.

This is actually a picture of a CNC machine that's burnt up. And so what do CNC machines do? Well they help us make parts in the manufacturing environment and they drill, or grind, or cut using different tool heads on different metal pieces. But to lubricate the cutting heads, we use combustible oils, and from time to time those will overheat and catch on fire.

In fact, I've got a video of this unit catching on fire. I'm gonna play the video, and it's actually taken from a security camera up in the corner of the manufacturing floor, and you'll watch this unit catch on fire. So, this is the video from the security camera and it's sped up a little bit, but you can see a number of different pieces. The fire actually starts here in the upper right-hand corner. And so you can see the smoke move across. Now, the fire never really got that big--not big enough to even set off the sprinkler system--but certainly big enough to burn that piece of equipment up.

And I've never purchased a CNC machine, but I understand them new to be around the $100,000 ballpark in cost. Used ones can be purchased for $20,000 or $30,000. And so, what we know from talking to different risk insurers out there, where their manufacturing-insured properties are actually allowing the CNC machines to run unmanned (which is pretty common), they're requiring them to install these Fire Trace systems to extinguish fires within them. So, we can see here how a system, on this top diagram, might get installed to protect a CNC. But in manufacturing we also see them installed in EDM machines, process logic control centers, fume hoods, and dust collectors.

This is part 8 of the Trending Technology Clean Agent Systemsseries. Watch the other parts at the links below:

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